CHAPTER V

THE LATER HISTORY OF THE BALLADS

BY comparing the different versions of the ballads, the history
of many of them can be traced over a number of years. Some
have undergone considerable transformations in the three or
four centuries during which they have been known. The
same kinds of changes seem to take place in all ballads alike,
no matter how different their origins may have been. There
are three main causes of change: communal recreation, the
printing of versions as broadsides, and re-shaping by skilled
poets.

First, communal recreation. It can be seen in its purest
form in the history of ballad music, since the tunes of the
ballads were rarely printed before the nineteenth century. I
have quoted Sharp's description of the mechanism by which
the community exerts its taste by varying and selecting tunes.
His description applies to some extent to ballads texts as well.
Communal recreation is the means by which a ballad, however
learned its origin, loses the signs of individual authorship
and takes on impersonality and the other ballad characteristics.
It may work for bad or for good. Degeneration often occurs
when a ballad gets into oral tradition: not all singers have
good memories, references to extinct beliefs may become
unintelligible and then corrupt (as in "the cocks are crowing a
merry midlarf" for "on merry middle-earth'J), and the poetic
sensibility of a community may decline. There is a good deal
of rubbish and nonsense in Child's collection, and even more
in the modern American collections. On the other hand,
communal recreation may sometimes produce a large number
of variations in a ballad, each with its own merit; and in
these cases it would be impossible to say that any particular
variation is the best because it is nearest to a hypothetical
archetype.

For example, Gerould quotes eight sets of the opening

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